


stars, hide your fires

by euphonie



Category: Fate: The Winx Saga (TV), Winx Club
Genre: Angst, Best Friends Forever, Coming of Age, F/M, Farah's Feelings, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Protective Saul Silva, Rosalind is a Toxic Mentor, Slow Burn, Suspense, The Golden Trio
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29751873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphonie/pseuds/euphonie
Summary: The Black Woods Massacre brings Saul and Farah closer than ever - just in time for Rosalind to push that bond to its limits.
Relationships: Andreas & Farah Dowling & Ben Harvey & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling & Ben Harvey, Farah Dowling & Ben Harvey & Rosalind & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling/Saul Silva
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	stars, hide your fires

**Author's Note:**

> Envisioning this as a grittier, multi-chapter story rather than the fluffy one-shots I prefer writing. Planning to end immediately pre-Aster Dell (unless this gets rave reviews idk), and have this be chock-full of Farah/Saul development. I reckon our fave trio is in their late twenties/early thirties, and really beginning to come into their own as true adults :) Subscribe to come along for the ride!
> 
> On the official Fate insta, there's a "World of Fate" post that says "Silva and Dowling are close friends and confidants after experiencing the Black Woods Massacre 16 years ago" - this is that story.
> 
> If you want visual references for the type of forest landscape we're in - try searching for images of the New Forest or the Forest of Dean in England.

The forest around her is eerily silent. The birds don’t sing, the insects are still, and even the wind seems to have stopped. It is the silence of bad omens and worse happenings, not the sparkling, clear peace of a Sunday morning. She has, of course, by now seen plenty of death and come close to it herself – but in her experience, the end has always made itself _known_. She is haunted at night by screams of fear and pain, the insistent gurgling of an injury that can’t be healed, the crash and bang of combat, and the hair-raising screeches of Burned Ones. The soundscape of Hell has been a seemingly constant soundtrack to her dreams since they graduated. But she has never known this kind of quiet, and it chills her to her bones.

Farah takes another wary step forward, and feels something wet drip onto her brow from above. It is warm. And in that instant, she is _too scared to look up_ because she knows what she will find.

Rigid with dread and already nauseous, she forces her eyes to trace the nearest tree skywards.

The villagers are draped between boughs above her like Spanish moss, the lucky dead on the ground perhaps the only ones with the relative luxury of having been murdered in mostly one piece. The violence of their fate leaves her stunned. It is almost too much for her to bear, and she can begin to feel her mind’s locks and levers click into place, neatly compartmentalizing what she’s seeing and hearing and _smelling_ , just so that she might continue to breathe herself. It takes her a long, long moment to get a hold of her faculties, and she is glad Rosalind isn’t there to see it.

Tearing her eyes from the gore, Farah takes stock. Roughly three hundred people had lived in Beaulieu, here on the edges of the Black Woods. And they weren’t stupid – the village folk might live simple lives, but they had done so alongside an ancient forest for centuries, and with such longevity came wisdom. They knew they _didn’t_ know all of the dangers that lurked inside the forest, and took care, both magical and mortal, to avoid the those they did know. And yet, from the looks of it, each and every person from the village was dead. Worryingly, they weren’t even _in_ the village. Something – _somethings_ – had driven them away from their homes, towards the thickest part of the forest and deliberately away from the wide river that could have helped them.

 _It was rare, but it happened_. The Burned Ones responsible for this massacre must be many, moving together. And perhaps it was not only Burned Ones they would have to deal with. She feels a fresh shudder skitter down the back of her neck. An ancient forest comes with ancient creatures, and she knows well enough from her studies at Alfea that such beings are not above capitalizing on the chaos of others’ making. Who knew what had joined forces with the Burned Ones? Or, perhaps, had merely finished off what they had started.

The Battalion has its work cut out, this time. She already knows they won’t all live to see the end of this macabre mystery.

She just hopes some of them do. 


End file.
